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Winter Olympics Preview, February 1998
 THE ARRIVISTES
Sick Broomwork, Dude!
A clip-and-save guide to two inaugural Olympic sports that promise thrills and,
uh, more thrills
By Paul Kvinta
The games in Nagano will welcome new friends to Olympic majesty: snowboarding — both halfpipe and giant slalom — and curling. For better or worse, one sport reflects where we've been as a society, the other where we're going. With a hale clap and some gratuitous chest-butting, we say hello.
| S N O W B O A R D I N G |
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C U R L I N G |
| Athlete launches two stories into the air to perform "sick" (truly exceptional) flips, spins, grabs, and combination maneuvers with names such as "crippler," "roast beef," "McTwist," "iguana," and "nose poke." |
OBJECTIVE |
Athlete pushes large, tea-kettle-shaped hunk of polished granite toward bull's eye. Teammates with brooms sprint ahead of projectile, furiously sweeping the ice, attempting to "guide the stone." |
| Digitally designed board based on a specified "flex profile," made of multiple layers of high-grade fiberglass around foam core, with steel edges sharp enough, say designers at Burton Snowboard, "to cut through bullet-proof ice" and decorated with lacquered graphics intended
"to look bad-ass." |
EQUIPMENT |
Forty-two-pound rock; brooms. |
| Hopped up on Beach Boys music but landlocked in Muskegon, Michigan, Sherman Poppen in 1965 screws together two pairs of children's skis and "surfs" down a snow-covered hill. He licenses idea to Brunswick, which sells a million "Snurfers" over the next ten years. |
HISTORY |
Bored Scottish farmers in the 1500s begin rolling stones across frozen bogs and lochs. Immigrants transport the game to Canada in 1759, where tournaments called "bonspiels" spread like warm haggis across the provinces and the northern United States. |
| Any ski resort with halfpipe and lift-rattling rap music. |
TYPICAL
VENUE |
Except in Wisconsin and Minnesota, where comfy, indoor "curling clubs" are more common than Lutheran churches, anywhere decent ice can be found. Each winter in Omaha, Nebraska, 21-year-old Olympic hopeful Chad Roza manufactures the state's only curling surface, in a local
horse barn. |
| The "Haaken Flip," personalized move of Norwegian halfpipe contortionist and odds-on gold medalist Terje Haakonsen. Called a "chiropractic nightmare" by some, few athletes can execute the flip with two full twists, as it requires big-time "fat air" (about 12 feet) off the
lip of the pipe. Explains Burton spokesman Carson Stanwood: "It's a question of balls." |
MOST
TELEGENIC
PLAY |
It's the tenth and final "end" (inning). Game's tied up. The team with the "hammer" (last shot) slips the rock through a "portal" (small space between two "guards," opposition rocks blocking the scoring area) and lands it a quarter inch closer to the "tee" (bull's eye) than
an opposition rock, thus snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. "I guarantee you," says USA Curling spokesman Rick Patzke, "the crowd would get pretty worked up." |
| "The Olympics are so stuffy," says 28-year-old halfpipe specialist Todd Richards. "Snowboarding will bring fresh air to it. Me, I'm a notorious shit-giver. I'll go around loosening up people's bindings and grabbing people's goggles and pulling them over their
heads." |
PHILOSOPHICAL
APPROACH |
Says Stacey Liapis, 23, finalist at the 1997 Curling National Championships: "I have learned that a person cannot win them all, and so I have also learned that when we lose, we must lose graciously and learn from that loss. We work hard, have fun, and most of all try to be
good ambassadors for the sport of curling." |
| Athletes cross-train with a crapshoot of death-defying sports. Medal hopeful Mike Jacoby, 28, sky dives, surfs, and flies his own Piper Cherokee. |
OFF SEASON
LIFESTYLE |
Athletes cross-train with a crapshoot of agricultural activities. Says Craig Disher, 39, of Rolla, North Dakota, whose five-member squad consists of grain farmers: "We plant in May, harvest in late August, and market our crops in September. By early October we're ready to
curl." |
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Photograph by Corbis-Bettmann
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